News/Canada

Nurse Leslie Warner will never forget being taken to her local RCMP detachment in Fernie, B.C., in 2022 and charged in a social security fraud operating out of Alberta.She says she was fingerprinted and had her mug shot taken."I was like: 'Oh my God, this is my identity theft,'" Warner recalls telling police. "I did not do this."The fraud charges were dropped soon after she explained that an imposter had been using her identity since 2020, when someone hacked into her Canada Revenue Agency account and filed a bogus return in Alberta that stated tax preparation company H&R Block was her new "authorized representative."But Warner had never authorized H&R Block to file her taxes.Warner said she has been trying for years to understand how her identity — and at times her life — came to ...

This First Person article is the experience of Scott MacMillan, who lives in Dumfries, N.B. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ. I watched the plane disappear into the sky, carrying my 15-month-old daughter to a hospital where her life could hopefully be saved. Hours earlier, we were in the emergency room in Fredericton, surrounded by sombre nurses. Doctors were attempting to drill into Rosemary's bone marrow to get fluids into her tiny body. The on-call specialist was hours away. The doctor told us our child was in diabetic ketoacidosis. That meant her pancreas wasn't producing enough insulin and her body was shutting down. This was 2022, so pandemic protocols were broken to let me into the hospital as this might have been goodbye. Rosemary was so str...

This First Person column is by Eyasu Yakob, who is a nursing student in Edmonton. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ. I began nursing school in 2021 at the University of Alberta during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across Canada, growing attention was being raised around the shortage of nurses as many health-care workers were reporting burnout. I wanted to be part of the solution. I was inspired to join the profession by my father, who worked as a nurse in Ethiopia before immigrating to Canada. Like many internationally educated health-care professionals, he faced barriers in having his foreign nursing credentials recognized in Canada. Instead, he worked multiple precarious, low-wage jobs to support our family. Pursuing nursing allowed me to carry on his leg...

This First Person column is by Eyasu Yakob, who is a nursing student in Edmonton. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ. I began nursing school in 2021 at the University of Alberta during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across Canada, growing attention was being raised around the shortage of nurses as many health-care workers were reporting burnout. I wanted to be part of the solution. I was inspired to join the profession by my father, who worked as a nurse in Ethiopia before immigrating to Canada. Like many internationally educated health-care professionals, he faced barriers in having his foreign nursing credentials recognized in Canada. Instead, he worked multiple precarious, low-wage jobs to support our family. Pursuing nursing allowed me to carry on his leg...

Weekly tutoring sessions. Reluctance to see friends in person. These are just some ways in which the educational impacts of COVID-19 still linger for Katherine Korakakis and her children, 14-year-old Bella and 17-year-old Nathan."We're spending probably close to $400 a week for the children to supplement and there's no other option because they're still not caught up," says Korakakis from her Montreal home. The teens are getting help in math, French and science."Both of them are still behind, both of them are still struggling.... And my children are not the only ones that have to deal with this," says Korakakis, who also advocates for other parents as the president of the English Parents' Committee Association of Quebec, an Anglophone parents' organization.WATCH | One mother talks about ho...

Canada has slipped to 18th place in the global World Happiness Report, down three spots from last year and placing it among the "largest losers" in happiness rankings over the last two decades, according to the annual report released Thursday.At its peak, in the 2015 report, Canada had placed fifth. Now, in 18th, Canada has dropped to its lowest-ever position since the polling began in 2005. The United States has also dropped to its lowest-ever position at 24th, having previously peaked at 11th place in 2012. The U.K. fell to 23rd.Finland once again came out on top, named the happiest country in the world for the eighth year in a row in the annual report published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford."In general, the Western industrial countries are now less happy t...

Feeling frustrated and helpless in the face of the chaos surrounding tariffs and politics in general these days? Well, there's a valid reason for that, and you're not alone. Between Canada's current political situation and U.S. President Donald Trump boasting about his "swift and unrelenting action" since taking office, his on-again-off-again tariff war targeting Canada and his threats to make this country the "51st state," it's enough to make anyone feel like they've aged a decade in the last few months. CBC News has heard from plenty of people sharing the anxiety, dread and fears they feel about the tariff war, Trump's policies and what seems like an unending onslaught of bad news. "I get completely obsessed with the news and my anxiety goes through the roof," said Saskatoon resident Tra...

An Ontario court has approved a historic $32.5 billion settlement that will see three major tobacco companies compensate provinces, territories and ex-smokers in Canada.In a ruling released today, Ontario Superior Court Chief Justice Geoffrey Morawetz called the approval a "momentous achievement in Canadian restructuring history."The settlement was first proposed in October after years of mediation between the companies — JTI-Macdonald Corp., Rothmans, Benson & Hedges and Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd. — and their creditors, which include plaintiffs in two Quebec class-action lawsuits as well as provincial and territorial governments.It was unanimously approved by creditors in December and faced its final hurdle — approval from the court — over several days of hearings that began late la...

The Cure is a CBC News series examining strategies provinces and territories are using to tackle the primary care crisis.With Canada currently in the depths of the cold and flu season and COVID continuing to spread year round, frustrated doctors say they don't want to waste time writing notes to excuse people from school or work. In fact, most doctors across the country want sick notes for minor illnesses eliminated altogether."Come on people, these are grown-ups," said Dr. Rita McCracken, a family physician and primary care researcher based in Vancouver. "If they have a cold and they are spewing germs and they're making a good call to stay home from work, they don't need to bring those germs into my office to get a note so that you can feel better about them not coming to work."An estimat...